Wednesday, May 04, 2016

I can't believe I'm agreeing with this guy...

“If it’s a competitive election, I probably will be compelled to vote for Hillary,” he said.

“Hillary is ideologically not where I am,” he continued, adding that he thinks she did a poor job heading the State Department. “But I do feel pretty confident that she would actually be a better president than Trump. I wouldn’t go to bed every night worrying about a mushroom cloud opening up somewhere in the world because of some insane thing Trump had done.”

Just so.

Hillary will do plenty of wrongheaded things, just as Obama has. I despised Obama throughout 2012, even as I argued in favor of his re-election -- and I have never regretted that stance. Obama kept us out of war in the Middle East; if Romney had won, we'd have 50,000 troops in Syria right now, and I shudder to think of where we would be vis-a-vis Russia.

If Trump wins in 2016...God knows.

The man is indeed unpredictable -- in the worst possible way.

Quite honestly, Trump is the only candidate in my lifetime who made me fear that the nuclear nightmare scenario could come true.

Unless you are of a certain age, you can't know what that fear truly feels like.

Some of my earliest memories -- not fully-formed memories: flashes -- involve the Cuban Missile Crisis. The strongest images probably go back to the worst day of the crisis, October 27. I distinctly recall my Mom sobbing for no reason that I could understand. She kept me in my room much of the day. She wouldn't let me watch television. As evening fell, I disobeyed the orders of my parents and quietly crept toward the living room.

Mom was asking my father: "They wouldn't really do it, would they?"

And my Dad said: "No. He's not crazy." I later understood that my dad referred to Kennedy.

Donald Trump, I am convinced, is not sane.

You can argue that there is no such thing as a completely sane individual. That's true: The landscape of every human mind contains small creeks and ponds and geysers of madness. Neither you nor I are exempt. It is also true that some presidents have seemed less emotionally stable than others: Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon come to mind. You may want to suggest another name.

But no previous president -- no previous major party candidate for president -- has ever scared me the way Donald Trump scares me.

You're wrong and you know it. If Romney had won, there would be a full-scale invasion. Where is there an American base or camp in Syria? What town do we occupy? Right now, it's all covert aid and the supply of arms. Horrible in its own right, but nothing like the trillion-dollar Iraq debacle. And my only problem with the airstrikes on ISIS is that there have not been enough of them. We should follow the lead of the Russians and expand the targets to include Nusra.

The "Both Sides Do It" media are going to paint Hillary as a scheming criminal who can get away with anything, and Trump as a successful businessman and showman who forthrightly says what the (white) Silent Majority is thinking.

Joe is right about Trump. He reacts to "NO, YOU CAN'T" with rage, and is preoccupied with revenge and settling scores. Give somebody like that 5,000 nuclear weapons and the chances are more than 50/50 they would be used on Iran, NK, Mecca, or Mexico City. And relying on the top brass to stop him? Trump demands loyalty oaths from his associates and followers.

He's a cross between Nixon and Caligua ... and that's exactly what the GOP base wants. The Democrats have no reason for complacency, or chasing rainbows and unicorns. They need to wake up fast. The media is not going to be on our side this election.

posted by ColoradoGuy : 4:28 PM

Well, I can get behind this post. As much as I may hate it, Clinton is really the only candidate at this point that makes any sense. I won't support her, but I ultimately will vote for her (though, as I've mentioned before, I'm not sure voting really means anything anymore, because I suspect it's totally rigged at this point.....but I will do it anyway, just in case I'm wrong...if I'm right, she'll be President anyway). My principles tell me to vote 3rd party, but even there, I'm not really seeing any candidates that inspire me to take that chance. I still say the monopoly of power that the two major parties has needs to be broken if we ever hope to return to democracy in this country. It's not going to happen this year though, as the rules need to be fixed so that 3rd parties actually have a chance to get on the ballots in all 50 states, let alone have a chance at winning (not to mention actually getting to participate in debates).

In any case, Trump is all about Trump, and nobody and nothing else. Egomaniacs are not good world leaders, as we have seen throughout history. I have said previously that I ALMOST wish he would win, just to see what would happen. However, I'm not as crazy as Trump, so that's not really what I want at all and is just my cynicism getting the better of me. We can NOT let this man become President. It will be the end of our republic, without a doubt.

Quite so. Obama has kept the US out of some pretty silly adventures in the MidEast. Probably why Bibi hates him so much. That or the general Israeli distaste for "schwartzers".

Harry

posted by Anonymous : 6:46 PM

There may be enough Clinton Derangement Syndrome cults out there who might rather see the world go puff than Hillary Clinton do good, that is my one concern. A surprising number of people would rather be right about Hillary Clinton being a bad president then be proud when she does well as president, I hope they can change, but I doubt it.

Hoop's last bit of CDS, a few posts down, was racist as well. I just couldn't engage, given everything going on these days.

posted by prowlerzee : 8:37 AM

I'd put it this way, Joseph--Trump is the real-life version of Greg Stillson from the novel and film The Dead Zone.

And my message to those who claim to be for Sanders but threaten to vote for Trump because, you know, "Bernie or Bust!" or "Trump will kickstart the Revolution!"--you can all go f#@! yourselves. There is too much at stake here for you to engage in your adolescent nonsense.